


The Room Where It Happens

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 07:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13631109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Decisions will be happening over dinner...





	The Room Where It Happens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).



Six hours after Bucky goes back into the ice, Steve makes inquiries of T’Challa’s staff and discovers something – or, rather, some _one_ unexpected in Wakanda. 

He finds Maria Hill sitting in a lounge, looking remarkably casual. Bright-patterned pants, a white sleeveless blouse with a scoop neck, the ubiquitous tablet and a phone she’s talking into when Steve walks into the suite, unannounced.

“I’ll have to call you back,” is all she says to the person on the other end of the line. She doesn’t look away from Steve as she disconnects. “Steve.”

He indicates the phone. “Fury?”

She tilts her head. “Maybe. I can tell you Sharon made it out. If you were wondering.”

Steve supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that she’s not going to answer his questions. “Thanks,” he says, taking a seat in the couch facing her. “I was.” Which is perhaps doing it a little strong to describe someone who hasn’t been in his thoughts since he left her until the last couple of hours. “Natasha?”

“Also out. And seeing to Clint’s family.”

“You don’t think Tony—”

“I don’t.” Maria’s gaze drops to her phone. “But I also don’t trust Ross, and better to have them safe than a family used as hostages.”

Steve grimaces. He hadn’t thought of that when he called Clint to back him up. He hadn’t thought about the protection of other people’s loved ones, about how others would make it out of the mess he’d made. He thought only of Bucky. Which, right there, says volumes about his priorities.

Maria is watching him now, her eyes narrowed. “Whatever you think of Natasha’s choices, she would never see Clint’s family used as pawns against him.”

“I— That’s not what I was thinking. Just that—” He hesitates, then rubs his hands over his face. “It escalated fast.”

“It always does. It didn’t help that you got involved—”

“He was innocent!”

“You mean he wasn’t guilty of the UN bombing.” Her tone is flat. “But even without that – first you made him a target by trying to hunt him down, then you made a spectacle of capturing him when he escaped the CIA, and _then_ you called in the Avengers to try to get him out of the country. Which part of ‘not making it worse’ did you fail to understand, Steve?”

She never feared being critical of him – or of Stark, or anyone else. Steve always found that admirable. Even when she was less than tactful about it.

“Apparently all of it.”

“Apparently.” Maria regards him for a long quiet moment. “You’re actually going to leave him here?”

“Always the note of disbelief.”

“After all the trouble you went to acquire him...”

Steve watches her for a long moment. “Maybe I’m saving you the trouble of trying to find your tools so you have them to hand when you need them.”

She blinks twice, but doesn’t look away or blush. “You’re not just tools.”

He notes the ‘just’. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“That’s very cynical for Captain America.”

“I’m not Captain America anymore,” he notes, and smiles when she snorts. “I don’t have the shield.”

“But you’re still serving.” Maria’s mouth twitches as he stares blankly at her. She indicates her outside shoulder. “I don’t wear the S.H.I.E.L.D patch anymore, but I’m still doing world security. You don’t need the shield to be what you are, Steve. Sure, it helps. Sure, you’re used to it. But you are what you are _here,_ ” she taps herself over the heart with one perfectly manicured nail, “and nothing short of death is going to change that.”

Steve supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Maria sitting there, telling him in clear and concise words what Erskine said with one look and a touch the moment before he died. She always had a way of putting her finger on the – hah – heart of the matter. Even when it stung, or when he didn’t like the truths she had to tell him.

“I could have done with you in Berlin,” he says, smiling.

Or maybe Tony could have done with someone to rein him in on his desperate, dramatic attempt to pay his dues. Maybe someone who knew them well enough to haul them all in could have stopped what happened – made them think about the consequences as it related to the people around them and not just themselves.

Or maybe not. Once Bucky came into the equation, all bets were off.

“I wouldn’t have been any help with Bucky in Berlin.” her echo of his thoughts is a little uncanny. “The CIA doesn’t like me – they’re still mad I went to Stark Industries instead of a government agency. And you had Sharon in any case. And even if I _could_ have helped you out, it’s a moot point. I wasn’t there. You broke Barnes out.” She shrugs. “Now the Avengers have split, and everyone has to live with what’s left.”

There are times when Steve wishes Maria wasn’t quite so brutally pithy. And there are times when the effect of a slap in the face is very much needed.

“ _What do you think?”_

_Six bullets later, Peggy lowered the gun. “I think that will do nicely.”_

He pushes away the twinge of Peggy’s loss. It doesn’t matter that she’s been lost to him for a long time; what he feels is the renewed ache of what might have been.

“T’Challa’s offering us sanctuary here.”

“Are you going to take it?”

He’d been planning to talk to the others about it, see what they wanted to do. Probably stay here – it was safest.

Then again, as she said so pithily, Steve is what he is – and he’s never been inclined to be ‘safe’.

So he looks back up at Maria and asks, “That depends. What have you got for me, Maria?”

She pauses, eyeing him and doubtless sifting through the possibilities. This is the way Maria works, after all. And as Steve’s waiting for her answer, his stomach grumbles, reminding him that he could do with something more substantial than an energy bar to tide him through the next six hours. He may not be fighting, but his metabolism never sleeps.

This time the twitch of her mouth transforms into a sleek smirk. “Dinner first, Steve. _Then_ world security.”


End file.
